Where are you, Leon? Thursday wants to know. What would you do?
The moonlight erupts above the Community Centre from Dayo’s lamps and shoots off the mirrored ball into the neighborhood. Thursday becomes suddenly aware, looking into the pattern of the bricks of the factory wall, of the scent of Seneca’s perfume in the exhaust. Maybe it is this smell that makes him commit. Maybe he is afraid of what Mush will do with his fists. Either way he climbs onto the bike as Seneca peels out in a roar of two-cycle pistons and gears. She mounts the curb behind some parked cars and Viljoen draws his pistol.
Viljoen fires twice, shattering the windshields as Mush, mesmerized by the moonlight, slowly joins him. Seneca clears the sidewalk and screeches along the road towards Salt River. Looking back, Thursday sees Mush coaxing his partner’s gun down in the moonshine, pointing at the sky.
“No,” Mush’s lips say, “look.”
They race ahead. Thursday closes his eyes, smelling the leather of the girl’s racing jacket. He thinks of Dayo’s moonlight and all the proud perlemoen he will nurture, and how he’s never held a girl like this before, and how, with his unmade mop streaming in the wind, roaring through the moonscape with all this fragile potential, Leon has finally let him be.
Abuja
Present day
Nigeria
A short flight, but a long drive in the evening, as the yellow danfo minibuses careened across the dirt-smattered lanes in a city of dim lights. Lagos: dampened, soft under the rain, moss on the walls, a landscape under a special gravity, heavy with people. Those were Melissa’s impressions in the ride from the airport to Victoria Island, and then back again the following morning, the sun brighter but the feel much the same: only more people. The President had been able to offer the private jet of a friend to the capital of Abuja, but solely one-way. On the return trip the President could offer her a guest-of-state visa and a chauffer who could accompany her to Lagos if she paid the bill.
Béatrice had insisted upon accompanying Melle to Lagos, and had arranged the clothing and, with the help of the President’s aide, the visa and the suite at the Hilton. The President had promised to ensure the rest ran smoothly after the brief stop over in Lagos. And it had. Melissa made the mistake of purchasing a Hausa headdress at the dutyfree shop, because the baggage handler pestered her to provide certification from a museum that it was not a stolen artifact, hoping for a bribe, until the President’s aide had intervened. In Abuja there were none of the potholes of Lagos and much fewer people. They drove past kilometers of planted cashuarina trees, where parishioners were gathering after an all-night event in the soccer stadium, and circular huts could be seen through the foliage lining the dirt frontage roads. Mountains erupted out of the fertile landscape, with green trees clinging to their sides. The mountains had a red-kneed dynamism and seemed to be continuously pushing themselves from the earth.
Not for the first time Melle was glad for the niqab. Her tears flowed freely beneath it until she caught the aide watching in the rear view mirror, and stopped. She had not wanted to shoot the scientist and had called an ambulance. She was not a religious woman but the sight of the moonlight rising from the neighborhood beyond the Royal Observatory portended something—what it was she was not sure—only that she knew she could not kill Wale in cold blood. In the pandemonium of the multitudes and the cops in the suburb, Béatrice had escorted Melissa from the Observatory, knowing not to ask questions.
The hotel suite in Abuja had been designed in the early Eighties, with a king-sized bed in the middle of the floor and drapes that could be pulled around the bed to partition it from the room. There was a full dining set and Jacuzzi bath, and satellite television. The view was of a pentagonal pool, some tennis courts, and the mountains behind it. On her bed in the hotel suite the President’s aide had provided an international SIM card for her cell phone, with enough credit to dial internationally. Melissa inserted the new card into her phone and dialed the aide, who explained he would pick her up in the early evening. Although they normally shared the same bed, Béatrice had been allocated a much smaller room and Melissa did not want to visit her.
“You are crazy to go to Abuja,” Béatrice said. “The moon is waning and you will not have the same influence. No one knows what happens there.”
But it was the last place that Bello had been seen. He had disappeared in the capital city and if anyone knew where he was it would be the President. Béatrice made Melissa promise that if her father was not in Abuja then she would never look for him again.
For the first time in years, Melissa turned on the television and scanned for news reports about herself. There was nothing, no mention of the moon that had fallen into Cape Town or the fate of the wounded scientist. She drifted off to sleep.
The President’s aide fetched them as dusk set in. As Melissa had requested, he did not use her real name. They passed through the lobby where there was a flagship Skoda sedan on display and a multicultural queue at the cash machines. The hotel bar was packed with guests enjoying peanuts and green bottles of Star beer and black bottles of Guinness, with a jazz pianist tickling the ivories. Some eyebrows lifted as she walked by, for Melissa and Béatrice were a striking pair in their matching niqabs and could not stifle their graceful gaits.
Melissa felt the humidity rolling off the car park and took refuge in the air conditioning of the aide’s car. “How far is it to see the President?” she asked.
“Not far,” the aide replied. “We are going to a function first, where the President has declared you the guest of honor.”
Béatrice immediately began to protest, but the aide shrugged his shoulders, stating that it was out of his hands, and the driver continued forward. They passed a giant golden mosque with minarets, then further along the central church, which the aide explained had taken fifteen years to build. The shingles on the roof were made from a copper that wouldn’t tarnish; no expense had been spared. By six-thirty the myriad streets were dark. Compared to what Melissa had seen of Lagos there was less poverty in Abuja, but she had a feeling the people were simply hidden. For a city of seven million she had seen enough homes for maybe a hundred thousand.
They arrived at an enormous, columned convention center, where a troupe of photographers was taking instant photographs of the guests alighting from their vehicles. Here Béatrice refused to open the door until the photographers were cleared, and further demanded that they be given their own table at the banquet.
Although many of the guests were smiling in their suits and agbadas and glinting headwraps, all of them seemed tired of each other. Waiters scurried about with hors d’oevres, malt sodas, electric red Chapmans sodas, and fresh juices. Flags of African countries draped the walls. There was the smell of fish, delicate colognes and perfume, of polished shoe leather. Béatrice helped herself to some nuts on the table.
A recorded announcement blared: “Presenting the Honorable Speaker of the Federal Territory, Rahim Odonkor.”
A side door opened and a stout, elegantly dressed man entered wearing a mauve three piece suit with a matching hat.
“It’s him!” She raised herself from her seat.
Béatrice coaxed her back down. “He said his name was Odonkor.”
“It’s Bello! I know it.”
He had put on weight. He was lighter skinned than Melissa remembered and sported wire-rimmed glasses. Bello’s hands were large for his body, and he was now using them to shake the hands of the guests seated at the tables nearest the microphone. Here was the man who was supposed to have disappeared, standing right before her, looking healthy as could be. His voice was buttery, his tongue moving over words with comfort. He had an infectious laugh. Every time he chuckled everyone else did too.
“We are in the difficult position,” he joked to the audience, “of having a guest of honor whom I can neither name nor of whom you may take a photograph. Nonetheless she is well-known to all in this room of having glorified our God-given African beauty, elevated us from the exotic
to the sublime. Let us raise our glasses, then, to our flag, and to all the flags of our continent, the wardrobe of our guest, the most celebrated ambassador of all our peoples.” He raised his glass to an imaginary point in the air. “Cheers.”
Melissa had grown used to having eyes upon her and could ignore them. She did it now. It was Béatrice who disliked the attention.
Bello then apologized that the President would be unable to attend the function, owing to reasons of political expediency. Like the guest of honor, the President rarely made public appearances. He nevertheless encouraged the guests to make merry and enjoy the President’s generosity. Most of the guests remained, although a few rose from their tables and left, evidently upset at the slight.
“I do not like him,” Béatrice whispered. “Let us go.”
How many lives had Bello crushed? Yet here he was, safe and commanding a room of dignitaries with ease. There was a dance show, with strong rhythms and wiry dancers and a man who could flex his shoulders like a bird, and songs about Abuja, and a comedian called Meatchops who made raucous jokes about the differences between Hausas, Igbos, and Yorubas that Melissa neither understood nor cared for. A large video screen was lowered at the rear wall beneath the flags that began, Abuja, its pristine drinking water, sophisticated highways, glorious pillars of religion, and towering convention halls that have hosted the world’s leaders, showing the Queen of England hobbling up a red carpet, a gallant horse show of hooded sultans from Sokoto. Mid-way through the ceremony the power went out and, whereas there had been nervousness in Cape Town, Meatchops the comedian joked about praying to electric generators, and when the power returned, ten minutes later, people served themselves at a buffet dinner as if the evening had been uninterrupted. They were hurried, eating fast, passing business cards, disappointed that they could not curry favor with the President, and in an hour the banquet was declared finished.
Béatrice was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She frowned at the guests and remained suspicious of Bello. “Melissa, please, let’s go. I do not like this. We should leave.”
“I am not leaving until I find my father.”
“I don’t trust him,” she continued. “The moon is too soft. You won’t have influence.”
“It’s too late.”
“Your father will be different. You were just a girl then, Melle. You are a woman now. Things will not be the same.”
Not after these years of searching, Melissa thought, not after what she’d done to Wale. She also knew she couldn’t search for her father and fight Béatrice too.
“You’re right, Béatrice. I must do this alone.” She ordered Béatrice to take a flight to France that evening. She refused to discuss the matter further as Bello came to take her arm.
They took separate cars, with Bello riding ahead in a cream-colored limousine and some motorcycles flanking his vehicle on each side. The caravan stopped after twenty minutes at a gate where ten men were sitting around chatting. There was a loud discussion and eventually the gate opened and they motored along a paved driveway with a number of large structures lit in the distance across well-kempt lawns. They stopped at a building that was indistinguishable from the others in the darkness. It was Bello who opened her door, smiling and agreeable. He enfolded her hand in his giant paws.
“Welcome, Melle, welcome to Abuja!” he said, shaking all the while. “It is an honor to be visited by such a world-renowned guest.”
Melissa did not lift her veil. “Thank you, Honorable Speaker, but I do not enjoy flattery.”
“Please, call me Rahim. There is a difference, Melle, between flattery and reflecting the truth, or, in your condition, the light.”
She was a whole hand taller than him. She also noticed, as she assured him that the arrangements had been fine, that he had changed his shirt in the car ride. It was now of bright red silk.
“Excellent,” Bello said. “If you’d allow me to indulge, I’d much prefer walking the grounds than sitting again after all that pomp and circumstance.”
He was providing her with an opportunity to thank him for being the guest of honor, but, not having wanted to attend the party in the first place, she did not. Bello attempted to grab her arm, causing her to tense, and smoothly slid his hand into his pocket as if that had been his intention all along. Small spotlights had been ensconced in the bushes and trees, giving the grounds the air of a sculpture garden, with elaborate topiaries carved into the hedgerows and shrubs. Now and again, a worker would pass with a gardening tool in his hand, bowing slightly in deference to Bello, who explained that the President paid a nighttime crew to cultivate certain plants, thereby increasing employment. But many of the passersby paid him no particular attention or even seemed to recognize him.
“You live here?” she asked.
“At the request of the President,” he said. “If I had my way, I would live in a much smaller compound, but the military men knew how to take good care of themselves. This is all borne of the oil boom in the Eighties. I am not, you will find, a typical politician. I detest largesse. What I desire is harnessing the potential of our country. We have enormous resources in Nigeria—natural and human—and that is what gets me up in the morning.”
For all his high-minded talk, Bello didn’t walk with the ease of a person who had earned his success. And Melissa was starting to recognize that he could bend even the worst news into lilting ribbons of uplifting phrases.
“Your facsimile,” he prompted casually, “indicated that you wish to organize a charitable fashion show to benefit the people of Abuja.”
“I regret that I have come with ulterior motives.”
“That’s nothing to worry about, Melle. May I call you Melle? We all have ulterior motives,” he smiled. “Charity, provided there is an element of sustainability, is always welcome in Abuja.”
Each of the buildings they were passing could have served as a church. There were wings jutting into the shadows, high plaster walls, small square windows with tinted glass. There was no way of telling which was a domicile and which an office. The palm trees, shrubs, and terraformed lawns were much more appealing. Bello would bend over now and again to sniff a flower, or tear off a dead leaf. He maintained a constant chatter while speaking with apparent sincerity and passion.
They passed a security guard in military uniform with an automatic rifle on his shoulder and Bello uttered a few words to him. The guard left guffawing. Bello took Melle to a greenhouse and showed her the President’s prize vegetables, before escorting her to an array of solar panels, which the President used to power the compound during blackouts instead of a diesel generator. He went into excessive detail about the small medical clinic, where he assured her they had the best midwives in the country. They paused again before one of the giant structures.
“I have always found it unfair,” Bello said seriously, “what happened to you, Melle.”
Melissa stopped to look him in the eye, wondering if he knew more than he’d let on. Did he know why she had come?
“You were orphaned at a young age, wasn’t it? Fashion models in the global North, in the Western global North,” he clarified, “are in an unfortunate position. It is a question of the homely and the comely. Northerners don’t know what to do with people who are comely, so they tell them to become models. As if it’s too painful to admit that people can be more physically attractive and have the same passions and desires. The same needs.”
So he wasn’t talking about her father, Melissa thought. But his words were still lulling her into listening. Never had she been in the presence of such an orator. It was as if he was watching each quiver of her lips and choosing his words accordingly.
“Because Northerners think,” Bello was saying, “that it would be too easy for beautiful people, charmed with physical gifts, to live the same lives as them. And it would not be fair.” He pinched a dead petal from an African violet. “And then society’s jewels—its orphans—are mocked when they fall into the addiction of self-doubt. Y
et the homely would all deep down want to be as beautiful as the comely. As you, Melle.”
Caught up in his empathic monologue, Melle thought she could, in her weakness, in his understanding, find some direction. That had happened to her: she had been abandoned by her friends because of her skin, she had failed at school in France, and she was now in the vicious gaze of the paparazzi. Her addiction? What was her addiction?
Bello added that no such thing would happen in Nigeria, that she would be celebrated and valued as an intelligent woman of means.
Then he proposed that she accept his hand in marriage. This bold step, which might have beguiled a less determined woman, startled her from his spell.
“I am sorry but you are mistaken, Rahim.”
Unphased, he quickly pointed how he had been shortlisted to become the next Minister of the Federal Territories, based on his unorthodox thinking and integrity, his principled stance against corruption, and would like nothing more than to share the demands and benefits of his office with her, a fellow Muslim.
“I’m not Muslim.”
“But you wear a niqab.”
“It is for fashion.”
“I see, then, it is for adornment. You could convert—I would have the sultan arrange a ceremony suitable to your tastes. I am a progressive Muslim, not one of these women’s-work types. You would be encouraged to grow, to explore. I am a firm believer in independence, pragmatism, self-actualization—”
“—I am looking for my father, Mlungisi Tebogo.”
Bello was suddenly and uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “What are you talking about? You’re from France. Your passport is from France. Your name is Melle. I signed your visa myself.”
“I changed my name, something you are familiar with.” Bello began walking wide paths around the security guards, shushing her to lower her voice. She ignored him. “I would like you to tell me where he is,” she added. “I met you in Bulawayo in 1993, Mr. Bello. You came to my father’s house and asked for his help. His name is Mlungisi Tebogo.”
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